Letters for a Spy (22 page)

“My friend, that question wasn’t rhetorical, you know. All nervousness and timidity notwithstanding?”

“I’m sorry. My mind wandered.” I quickly had to rein it in. “Yes, I agree that it’s surprising. But, Heinrich, who knows? It’s common knowledge he’s religious. And maybe that’s what comes across so strongly and what makes people feel comfortable in his presence.”

“Makes
you
feel comfortable in his presence.”

“I realize that being a Christian doesn’t altogether square with his being timid. But I was probably wrong to say timid. At heart, perhaps, he’s confident and fearless.”

But for the moment, obviously, it was neither the admiral’s timidity, nor lack of it, which interested my host.

“A Christian?” he repeated, slowly. He looked thoughtful.

“Again, like myself.”

“Evidently. But as you’re naturally aware—for, even as we speak, I can see that you’re regarding me with something of the martyr’s glare—a religious outlook isn’t called for any more in Germany. The Führer is our God. We don’t need deputies.”

He said this straight-faced … it was difficult to gauge his true opinion. For a while, we stayed silent. Buchholz drew himself up on the bed. He rearranged his cushions.

“So then,” he said at last. “All very fascinating. But who can tell what bearing it will have? For the minute let’s just go back to that article in the
Express
. As we agreed—an arrant example of the British press plumbing new depths, yes? Complete rubbish from start to finish. Yes?”

Again, like on Friday, Buchholz appeared to be waiting for an answer. Obediently I supplied it.

“Yes!”

“Well, no,” he said. “In fact, not.”

“Not?” For a foolish second or two, I thought he was merely retaliating for my joke about the storm-troopers.

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me. That article … I wouldn’t present it as being worthy of the Pulitzer. But at least it may have contained one single, lonely grain of truth. And I suppose we should have realized, yes? Seldom any smoke…”

Once more I felt assailed by apathy.

“What single grain of truth?”

“Well, now—would you credit it?—of late, we hear, there’s been a rash of key German spies defecting to the Allies? Most particularly, it seems, in Turkey. And, rightly or wrongly, Adolf was blaming our own dear boss for this. The consequence, you’re all agog to know? Summary dismissal, no less!”

Buchholz laughed but I couldn’t see why; the sound conveyed no element of humour.

“Though you’ll now be pleased to discover,” he went on, “that in the end it was nothing but a storm in a teacup. Full of sound and fury, signifying naught. Our Führer is a little subject to these sudden whims. Your friend was reinstated.”

“Thank God for that,” I answered. Albeit listlessly.

“But just don’t thank him in public, that’s all—not if you know what’s good for you—not around Berchtesgaden, at any rate.”

27

“Now then,” he continued. “That interesting little titbit about his dismissal and reinstatement was fact … solid fact. Not rumour. Yet I have to acknowledge that there
are
rumours … which, in certain quarters, are as rife as rats’ fleas—let’s not attempt to minimize!”

“Oh … rumours! Well, I for one don’t want to hear them.”

“And I for one consider that you should.”

At which point I myself nearly became subject to those same sudden whims of the Führer. Felt strongly tempted just to push back my chair and flounce out. Gwatkin had aroused a similar response when speaking about Krauts. I was damned if a Kraut should do the same when speaking of the admiral.

But, as before, my temper luckily cooled and then I contented myself merely with adopting a bored tone and enquiring why such rumours should be circulating
now
of all times.

I said: “It couldn’t have anything to do with simple jealousy and malice, could it? With kicking a man while he’s down? And the better the man the harder the kicks?”

“Yes, of course it could, my dear! Of course it could! It could have
everything
to do with that.”

I felt marginally appeased. Even if in such a context I couldn’t exactly warm to the manner of address.

“Especially so,” he said, “in view of the kind of thing they’re now raking up. Some of it tends to hark back, you know.”

“Hark back?”

“It’s said, for instance, that halfway through the thirties he even advised Franco not to side with Hitler. I think one could fairly term that as harking back.”

I made no reply. I looked across the narrow road at the supposed schoolgirl still trying perhaps for the Baltic.

“And the reason he gave?” went on Buchholz. “I’m sure you would wish to know this. That when the war came we were definitely going to lose.”

Surprisingly, I didn’t feel incensed by what I heard. Not even indignant. Was this because there was probably nothing for the time being that appeared sufficiently important? Or was it more because I could actually accept the feasibility of it? Certainly Canaris—who spoke Spanish fluently—had always liked General Franco and the two of them had always enjoyed a good working relationship. So the thought of casual advice given by one friend to another (“If I were you, old boy, I shouldn’t side with
us
!”) was hardly very shocking. The admiral’s lack of faith in the victory of the Fatherland ought perhaps to have been more worrying; but the fact that I myself didn’t feel particularly upset by it…? Well again, I wondered, had this solely to do with the timing. I turned back from the window.

“Is that it?”

“Oh, by no means. It’s also claimed that Canaris was heavily implicated in the coup attempts of 1938 and 1939…”

“So once more, as you say, not precisely of the here and now! And I fondly imagined that if you coughed in Paradise Street at three, Hitler would know about it by five-past.”

He affably conceded the point. “So I think,” he said, “we can now skip across to the present.”

“You sound as though you’re granting me a boon.”

“To the time when—as recently as just two months ago—Canaris flew to Smolensk to meet conspirators on the staff of the Army Group Centre.
Allegedly
,” he added, rather fast.

“Allegedly!” I repeated. “Huh!”Sadly, this seemed the best riposte I could come up with.

“But evidently,” went on Buchholz, “our Führer has the luck of the devil! As a result of that meeting, a miniature bomb was concealed inside a bottle of Cointreau and travelled beside him the very next time that he flew. For better for worse, however, it failed to detonate.”

He smiled.

“Though, naturally, I mean for better. But while we happen to be speaking of liqueurs and suchlike…” He spread his hands toward the Johnny Walker.

I nodded my acceptance and he moved off the bed again with some agility. Became bartender beside the chest of drawers.

And whilst raising my glass I actually managed to laugh—a laugh that sounded far more genuine than his own last pitiful attempt. “Down with the scandalmongers, then! Seedy, small-minded, pathetic!”

I suspected that Buchholz—one side of him, anyway—had wanted to see me rendered furious by his tale about Smolensk. Yet he appeared to take my toast in good part. He sipped at his whisky and seemed quite as relaxed and appreciative as ever.

“Though on the other hand,” he observed, cordially, “didn’t we just say—seldom any smoke without fire?”

“No, Heinrich. You did.”

“
Touché
!” He smiled and shrugged and gave a fair-minded nod.

I said: “But what I still don’t follow—
one
of the things I still don’t follow—is why you’re so keen that I should listen to all this.”

“Ah, well,” he said. “I’m simply trying to sketch in a dab or two of background.”

“Background to what?”

At first I couldn’t be sure whether Buchholz was answering this question. I soon realized he wasn’t.

“You know, there are even those,” he remarked, “who assert that the admiral sees our leader as being—what?—as being very mildly (only
very
mildly, of course) unhinged; who assert that although at the start Canaris simply hoped to steer him away from some of his … well, again, what shall we call them? … slightly more ambitious excesses, or desires, he fairly soon gave up on that endeavour and instead…” Buchholz became deflected by his drink.

“Instead?”

“Decided to oppose a little more drastically what he has allegedly spoken of”—he hesitated again—“as being nothing less than criminal folly, ‘the criminal folly of our Führer…’”

‘Allegedly’ might rapidly be growing into a favourite word around here but I certainly didn’t mean to let him hide behind it forever.

“No, Heinrich!” I exclaimed. “Now you’ve really gone too far! Admit it! He would never have said that! Never!”

“Perhaps not on the parade ground, nor over the wireless. But, as I say, there are those who would attest to it—who maintain that in private—”

“Those, no doubt, who would have numbered themselves among his very dearest friends!”

“Ah,” smiled Buchholz. “Withering, withering! Though I think—oh, Lord!—you’re going to like even less the thing I’m now about to mention. Apparently Smolensk wasn’t just an isolated incident.”

“No?” I enquired, icily.

“For it’s said, you see, that he continually uses his position at the Abwehr to aid and abet the army conspirators. To abet them…”

There came another burst of laughter from downstairs. Our whole conversation had been punctuated by such sounds but this one was yet more full-throated than the first of them I’d heard.

“Precisely!” I approved. “The single really suitable response! I only hope I would have thought of it myself!”

“…to abet them in their numerous overthrow attempts. Or else assassination bids. And furthermore…”

But Buchholz must at last have taken heed of my expression and decided that ‘furthermore’ could wait.

“My dear boy. I’m purely trying to show you that—just possibly—your beloved Admiral Canaris doesn’t always see our interests, our
official
interests, as being his absolutely top priority.”

He went on quickly and without giving me the chance to comment.

“Though here’s one rumour which I’m sure you won’t have so much trouble in believing. To wit … that recently he’s prevented the killing of dozens of captured French officers in Tunisia.”

“Well, at last! There you are, then! That sounds a bit more like it!”

Buchholz regarded me with amusement.

“So—finally—something which you find you’re able to accomodate?”

Did he suppose he was being funny? My stony demeanour didn’t change. Nor did the harshness of my tone.

“Like I’ve told you,” I said. “Canaris is a Christian. Christians don’t plan assassinations. They do step in—if it’s at all within their powers to do so—to put an end to senseless slaughter.”

“I don’t think that, in the main, anyone could contradict that.”

“Besides,” I added, “why would you even speak of this as rumour? There must be literally hundreds who can either confirm it or deny it. Right?”

“Right,” said Buchholz. He stood up. As before, he poured a generous double for us both, with only the smallest splash of soda. “And it certainly sounds a bit more like the man who—reputedly—wouldn’t spare himself in trying to stop Reinhard Heydrich’s brutality in Russia. Not
every
rumour needs to be malicious, you perceive.”

“Oh, Heydrich!” I said, in deep disgust. “Reinhard Heydrich and his
Einsatzgruppen
forces!”

“Yes. Even I would have no wish to whitewash Heydrich.”

This actually surprised a laugh out of me which was genuine.

“You mean—as you’ve been trying your hardest to whitewash the admiral?”

Buchholz himself laughed. “No, no … how can you compare them? With Heydrich we’re talking war crimes. Genocide. No one has ever accused the admiral of genocide. Nor even of war crimes. Not that kind of war crime, anyway. Against the Führer, maybe, but not against the peasants or the unprotected. I have never said—no one I know has ever said—that Canaris isn’t essentially a very decent human being…”

I muttered slowly: “I thought you were having trouble in remembering him.”

It was now his turn to sigh. “Oh, my good friend, do you really have to be
so
argumentative? Hasn’t it occurred to you that for the moment we seem to be in perfect harmony?”

“No, I’m not certain that it has. You’ve allowed him to be a very decent human being—I give you that—but only after you’ve appeared to be suggesting, non-stop, that he’s some kind of a liability to us, some kind of a … My God, yes. When all is said and done, you’ve been suggesting that he’s a … That he’s a…” I couldn’t even bring myself to use the word.

“But, Erich, I stress—only maybe.
Maybe
. There isn’t any actual proof. Merely a mass of circumstantial evidence. Yet the weight of that evidence is coming increasingly to alarm a number of very highly placed and influential people.”

“A number which clearly doesn’t include the Führer.”

“No, not so far. But how long can it be before it does?”

I raised my previous point. “Well, if the admiral was really implicated in the coup attempt of 1938 and the Führer hasn’t even tumbled to that yet…?”

But Buchholz responded neither to the sweet forbearance of my tone nor to the validity of my implication. Instead he suggested:

“Shall I tell you the nickname already being conferred on him by some of those who say these things?”

“No, I’d much rather you didn’t. Please don’t. I’m just not very interested.”

“Young prig!” he said—but amiably and with indulgence. “You know you’d now find it quite tantalizing
not
to hear. He’s being spoken of as the
Hidden Hand of the Wehrmacht Resistance
.”

“What!”

For the second time in about two minutes—and again whilst least expecting it—I was obliged to laugh. The
Hidden Hand of the Wehrmacht Resistance
! It sounded like a title splashed across the cover of some penny-dreadful boys’ adventure. Or like next week’s cliffhanging instalment at the Saturday morning picture show. It was absurd; it was ludicrous. It was very nearly appealing.